Sharing a Single Smartsheet with External Partners (No SSO Access)

Question

Hi Smartsheet Community,

I’m hoping you can help clarify a Smartsheet sharing question.

I’m trying to share one specific sheet from my  Smartsheet plan with two external colleagues from our partner organization. Several colleagues have mentioned they’ve successfully shared sheets with external partners before, so I’m hoping this is possible in my case as well, despite some recent changes to sharing rules.

However, when I attempt to share the sheet, I receive an error related to account access / Single Sign‑On (SSO). My external partners do not have Smartsheet accounts associated with SSO, which seems to be the blocker.

My key questions:

* Is there a way to share an individual sheet with external users who do not have SSO accounts?
* If so, are there specific settings (admin, security, or sharing options) that need to be enabled?
* Can this be done without sharing the full workspace, as I only want to provide access to the sheet directly related to our joint work for confidentiality reasons?

Any guidance, best practices, or examples from others who’ve navigated this successfully would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Olga

olga_novikova2026 · Answer

Thank you, PittsburghRob and Janae G., very much for your feedback - this is very helpful.

My external partners do not hold paid Smartsheet licenses under our organization’s account. Can external collaborators access a shared sheet by creating a free (non‑licensed) Smartsheet account, and is this supported without SSO?

I’d like to confirm whether this approach would allow access to a single sheet only, without extending visibility to the broader workspace.

Janae G. · Answer

Hello @olga_novikova2026 !

To add on to what PittsburghRob said- it shouldn't be a problem to share with external users, so long as they have a Smartsheet account. They do NOT need to be on the same SSO or same organization account, just have a Smartsheet login of some kind.

What has worked for my stuff is just sharing with them as normal using their email in the Share dialog box on the sheet. You can set permissions as normal and share just a sheet or the whole workspace as normal.

I would check with your Smartsheet system admin if you have problems sharing a sheet with an external user.

https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/system-admin-access-and-authentication/secure-external-access

PittsburghRob · Answer

Hi Olga,

I would first add these two external contacts as contacts in Smartsheet. You may also need to add their email addresses to the approved domain sharing list which is accessible in the Admin Center. Once these steps are complete you should be able to share the sheet normally.